Kiss of the Highlander (13 page)

Her face must have betrayed her feelings, because he inhaled sharply. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed, and he went quiet, with the perfect stillness of a mountain lion before hurling itself at its prey.

She swallowed. “What are you doing with those stones?” she forced herself to ask, flustered by the intensity of what she was feeling. “Don’t you think it’s time you tell me?”

“I have told you all I can.” His eyes were cool slate, the crystalline light that usually danced within them subdued.

“You don’t trust me. After all I’ve done to help, you still don’t trust me.” She didn’t try to conceal that it hurt her feelings.

“Och, lass, doona be thinking such. ’Tis merely that some things are…forbidden.” Not really, he amended silently, but he simply couldn’t risk revealing his plans yet, lest she abandon him.

“Bullshit,” she said, impatient with his evasions. “If you trust me, nothing is forbidden.”

“I do trust you, wee lass. I am trusting you far more than you know.”
With my life, possibly even with my clan’s very existence….

“How am I supposed to believe in you, when you won’t confide in me?”

“Ever the doubter, are you not, Gwen?” he chided. “Kiss me, before I sketch the final symbols. For bonny fortune,” he urged. Shards of crystal glittered in his eyes, reminding her that although sometimes he banked his passionate nature, it was always simmering just beneath the surface.

Gwen started to speak, but he laid a finger to her lips.

“Please, lass, just kiss me. No more words. There have been enough of them between us.” He paused before adding quietly, “If you have aught to say to me, let your heart speak now.”

She took a deep breath.

There was no question what her heart was saying. Earlier that afternoon, when she’d gone down to the village, she’d dug her crimson thong out of her pack and, after washing up, had put it on. Then she’d peeled off her nicotine patch, preferring outright withdrawal to having to explain its presence on her body. She was not going to make love for the first time with a patch on. Besides, once she’d made the decision, a remarkable calm had settled over her.

She knew what she was going to do.

Truth be told, she’d probably known the moment he’d opened his eyes that she was going to give him her virginity. The past two days had been nothing more than her way of growing accustomed to the thought, so she would be less apprehensive when she finally did it.

She wasn’t simply attracted to him, she was drawn to him on every level—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

She wanted him in a way that had no rhyme or reason. She felt things when he spoke to her and touched her that originated from a unique place inside her. It no longer mattered to her that he might be mentally unbalanced. During the passage of the day, digging beside him in the ruins of the castle while he talked of the various members of his clan, she’d realized that she was going to stick by him until he worked out whatever reality problem he was having. She
liked
him. She wanted to know more about him. She’d begun to respect him, despite his delusions. If she had to check him into a hospital, hold his hand, and sit by his side until he recovered, she was going to do it. If she had to walk around Scotland for months clutching a photograph of him until she found someone who could identify him and shed light upon his condition, she was going to do it.

She tucked her bangs behind her ear and looked at him levelly. Her voice hardly shook when she said, “Make love to me, Drustan.”

Mad or not, she wanted him to be her first lover, here and now, on top of a mountain in the Highlands, beneath a million stars, encircled by ancient stones. Perhaps making love had some healing power. God knew, she probably needed some healing too.

His eyes flared and he went perfectly still. “I did hear that, did I not?” he said carefully. “You did say what I think you said? Or have I truly gone as mad as you accuse me of being?”

“Make love to me,” she repeated quietly. There was no tremor in her voice the second time.

His silver eyes glittered. “Lass, you honor me.” When he opened his arms, she leaped at him, and he swung her effortlessly into his embrace, pulling her legs around his waist. They both gasped at the intensity of the contact. A current of desire sizzled between them, zapping them both to the core. With powerful strides, he backed her to the perimeter of the stones until her spine rested against one of the megaliths. He lowered his head and kissed her, grinding his hips against her, and when she cried out, he caught it on his tongue.

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you,” he said roughly.

“Me too,” she confessed, with a breathless laugh.

“Och, lass, why dinna you tell me?” he asked, kissing her jaw, her cheeks, her nose and lashes, cradling her face with his hands. “Why did you resist? Three
days
we could hae passed doin’ this,” he said, his burr thickened by desire.

“Not if we wanted to get to your stones,” she panted, wondering why he couldn’t just shut up and kiss her hard on the mouth. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said.

He laughed and kissed her so hard that it unleashed ferocity in her tiny frame. She’d seen movies where people made love slowly, sinuously wrapping around each other, but theirs was a mating of wildness. Given their propensity to argue heatedly, she hadn’t expected their sex to be anything less intense. She couldn’t get enough of him, she wanted more tongue and more hands and more of his muscular ass. She wanted him naked against her body. Wanted to feel him pounding into her. She’d waited all her life for this, and she was ready. Just
looking
at him made her wet.

He tugged her shirt from her shorts and fumbled with her fly, kissing her urgently all the while. “Your trews, lass, get them off,” he said roughly.

“I can’t. My legs are wrapped around you,” she mumbled. “And
ow
. Your knife is poking my breast.”

“
Mmm
, sorry.” He nipped her lower lip and sucked it hard. “I must put you down, lass, to get you naked. And ’tis needin’ you naked I am.”

But he didn’t make any move to lower her, hostage to her luscious mouth nibbling at him, her wee hands clawing at his back.

“So put me down, MacKeltar,” she panted a few minutes later against his mouth, desperate to feel his skin against hers. “I have too many clothes on!”

“I’m
trying
,” he said, trailing kisses down her neck and scraping his velvety tongue back up, only to arrive at her lips again, a position he could hardly fail to take full advantage of.

“Don’t put me down,” she whimpered when he stopped kissing her. Her lips felt naked and cold without him, her body bereft.

The minute her toes touched the ground, she reached impatiently for his clothing, but he dived for her shorts at the same moment, cursing when he bumped his jaw on her head and she got tangled up in his hair.

She fumbled with his hair, then found her way to the leather bands across his chest but was unable to fathom how he’d fastened them. Brushing her hands aside, he tugged her shirt over her head, than stared at her bra. He touched the lacy fabric with fascination. “Lass, show me your breasts. Be quit of this thing, lest I tear it to shreds in my haste.”

She popped the front clasp swiftly and slipped it off. The cool air teased her nipples into puckered crests, and he drew a sharp inhalation of breath. For a moment, he didn’t seem to be able to move, just stood and stared.

“You have splendid breasts, lass,” he purred, cupping the plump mounds. “Splendid,” he repeated stupidly, and she almost laughed. Men loved breasts—any shape or form, they just loved them.

And he was certainly loving hers. He palmed them, lifting and squeezing, and with a husky groan he buried his face in her breasts, rubbing back and forth before drawing a nipple deep into his mouth.

Gwen panted softly when he scattered scorching kisses over her breasts. She twisted and turned in his arms, wanting his mouth there…and there…and there, telling him with her body just how and where she needed him. His fingers worked at her shorts, with little success, and grunting his frustration he tugged at her zipper but succeeded only in jamming it off the track. Encountering similar resistance with his costume, she moaned frantically. She wanted skin against skin; she needed it—every last inch, pressed slick and intimate.

“Oh, just do your own and I’ll do mine,” she snapped, impeded desire making her downright testy. She needed him naked
now
.

He looked as relieved as she felt by the efficient solution, and as she tugged and twisted at her zipper, then kicked off her shorts, he removed his plaid, tossing knives left and right, doffing his ax and sword and finally shucking his leather armor. He stood up straight, tossing his long dark hair over his shoulders, and looked at her.

“Christ, MacKeltar,”
Gwen breathed, stunned. Six and a half feet of sculpted naked warrior stood before her, unselfconscious in his nudity. Proud, in fact, and well he should be. He was raw and male and powerful beyond compare, and it had certainly
not
been a sock or twenty in his jeans. He was breathtaking, and he had a remarkable amount of mass that she had not been factoring into her equation of why she was orbiting him, but she certainly would be in the future. It explained a great deal.

His eyes drifted over her breasts, down her belly, then lit on her kitten thong, and he made a strangled sound. “I thought that was some strange ribbon to restrain your hair. ’Twas why I put it on your pallet that night, thinking you might plait it before you slept. But, ah, lass, I far prefer it there,” he said roughly. “ ‘Tis wise you did not tell me that was beneath your trews, for I would have walked around hard all day thinking of removing it with my tongue.”

He likes my thong,
she thought, beaming. She’d always known that if she’d picked the right man to pluck her cherry, he would appreciate her good taste.

Slipping to his knees before her, he proceeded to do as he’d threatened, lifting the strap of her thong away from the smooth curve of her hip with his teeth and licking the sensitive skin beneath it. He tugged the silk down with little nips, curving his tongue beneath it. She dug her fingers into his shoulders as he licked again and again, building resonance beneath her skin. He sucked her sensitive nub through the silk, making her arch against him, begging for more. Each inch he bared he swept with a hot stroke of his tongue, alternating tiny love bites. His callused hands glided up her thighs, and the delicious friction created by his rough palms against her smooth skin awakened erogenous zones she’d never known she had. Her knees trembled and she clutched his muscled shoulders for support.

“Lovely you are,” he purred, slipping his hands between her thighs, kneading and tasting her. “I doona know which part of you to taste first.”

“Drustan,” she moaned, pressing against him.

“What, Gwen? Do you want me?”

“God, yes!”

“Did you want me when you saw me in those blue trews?” he pushed. “Did you want me then too?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel the heat when I touch you? Does it hit you like a thunderbolt too?”

“Yes.”

He stripped off her thong and rose to his feet. He drank in the sight of her nude body for a long moment before dragging her into his arms.

They both cried out as skin met skin, stunned by the intensity of the contact, sizzling where they touched. He kissed her deeply, his tongue hot and hungry, plundering her mouth. She arched her back, rubbing her breasts against him. When he cupped his hands beneath her bottom, she clasped her hands behind his neck and wrapped her legs tightly around him, so his erection was firmly trapped in the vee of her thighs. She squirmed, wanting him inside her
right now
, but either he wasn’t cooperating or she was too clumsy to angle them into the right position, which, she rued, given her inexperience, was possible.
But it doesn’t seem that he’s being particularly helpful,
she thought mulishly, breaking their kiss long enough to look at him. His silvery gaze was wicked…and cockily amused.

“Are you
torturing
me?”

“
My
pace, lass. You’re the one who said no and wasted days. We might have done this yesterday when you stuffed me into those torturous trews. And later that afternoon. And later that night, and this morning, and—”

When she tried to reply, he kissed her so hard she forgot what she was going to say. He rocked himself against her, mimicking sex, gliding back and forth in the slick vee of her thighs. Millions of tiny nerve endings screamed for more.
Well, if he won’t, I will
. She knew better than most people that forces of nature should not be resisted or subdued. She twisted against him, rubbing herself wantonly, pushing herself to the peak.

As her soft panting became more frantic, Drustan broke the kiss and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant and wild, her lips kiss-bruised and parted.

“That’s it, lass, take your pleasure.” He was riveted by her unabashed hunger for him; she was making him hotter and harder with every insistent thrust of her hips. If he wasn’t careful, he’d spill without ever entering her. He doubted a woman had ever desired him so intensely.

She whimpered as she came, she purred, she rubbed against him like a love-starved kitten.

“Yes,”
he breathed, flooded with purely male, possessive triumph. When her shudders subsided and she relaxed against him, he lowered her to the ground on his plaid, then sat back on his knees and gazed at her for a long moment. Long enough that she began to squirm, and it wrought havoc upon his fleeting control. She arched her back, raising her breasts toward him, her nipples dark berries, begging to be suckled.

“Touch me,” she whispered.

“Och, lass, I’ll touch you,” he promised. He nudged her legs wider, then drank in the sight of her, lying in wait for him, her full breasts swollen from his kisses, her thighs open and slick with her desire.

He ran his hand up the inside of her thighs, across her woman’s wetness, then down the other leg. Once, twice, and a half dozen times lingering between her thighs, flicking her sensitive nub, until she was arching her hips up from the plaid.